GREENSBORO, N.C. — Thursday morning President Trump tweeted several times about making sure your vote gets counted. His suggestion in these tweets come down to this:
- Get an absentee ballot
- Mail it early
- Go to the polls and try and vote again to make sure you vote, in case something happened to your absentee ballot
These tweets stem from the President's visit to our state Wednesday.
“So, send it in early, and then go and vote. And if it's not tabulated, you vote and the vote is going to count. You can't let them take your vote away”.
Some folks have taken this to mean the President wants you to vote twice.
Of course, you really can't vote twice. Yes, it's illegal if you knowingly try to cast more than one ballot. The North Carolina Board of Elections put out a statement saying, ”Attempting to vote twice in an election or soliciting someone to do so is a violation of North Carolina law.”
There are safety measures to keep it from happening even if this is tried.
“For Election Day, we will print those on Sunday before the election, and if you sent it in, it's marked, and if you go to vote, they'll say ‘Sir, ma'am, you've already cast a ballot,’ so we can stop you right there,” says Guilford County Board of Elections Director Charlie Collicutt.
Could someone get around that safety measures and vote twice?
For example: could someone get an absentee ballot, postmark it on election day and have it count and then go to the polls on election day and have that vote count too?
“When we process that incoming absentee ballot we'll know, the system will see that this person already has a voting history. So, you might send in a second ballot, but you won't get a second vote counted,” said Collicutt.
HOW TO CHECK YOUR ABSENTEE BALLOT WAS COUNTED.
In North Carolina, there are three other ways for you to confirm your absentee or mail-in ballot is counted.
- Voter Search Tool: shows when your voter ballot was accepted
- Ballottrax: this new service will be launched shortly. It allows voters to track their ballot through the mail and confirm receipt by the county board of elections
- Contact your county board of elections